1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data communications systems. More particularly, it relates to an automated communications system which coordinates the transfer of data, metadata, and instructions between databases in order to control and process communications.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
All communications consist of a mechanism for exchanging information between one entity, a provider, and another, a consumer. The terms "provider" and "consumer" are used to designate separate functions in information transfers. Typically an entity, at various times, operates as both a provider and a consumer in any communication relationship. These relationships may be one-to-one, such as between two individuals; one-to-many, such as between company and its customers; or many-to-many, such as between the members of a workgroup. These communications relationships may also exist over multiple communications networks, such phone networks, LANs, public data communications networks, radio and TV networks, wireless networks, and conventional postal mail networks.
Establishing, maintaining, operating, and even terminating any one of these types of communications relationships involves significant work on the part of both the provider and consumer. For example, to initiate any type of communications relationship, providers must first locate the consumers with whom to communicate and vice versa. Solving this problem is subject of several entire industries, such as the directory industry, the mailing list industry, and the advertising industry. Once a provider or consumer has been identified, contact information (e.g., names, titles, addresses, telephone numbers, electronic mail addresses, etc.) must be exchanged between the provider and consumer. This contact information must be maintained by both parties so that future communications can be effected as needed. When the contact information changes for an entity, all providers or consumers having relationships with the entity must be notified of the changes, who in turn must update their own records. This work also extends to other data and records exchanged in the context of the communications relationship, e.g. orders, receipts, product numbers, invoice numbers, customer numbers, notes, brochures, reports, etc. Maintenance of this information requires significant human time involvement for receiving information, storing information, indexing information, searching for desired information, and retrieving information. The human component of record maintenance also creates a potential for error, which can cause the information to be faulty or to become lost.
Once the communications relationship is established, the next major workload is the active use of the relationship to accomplish communications objectives. The problems here take different forms depending on the type of communications relationship. For example, in a one-to-many relationship, particularly a mass-market relationship such as a company and its customers, the problem is how to efficiently disseminate information about products and services to consumers. Optimally, such information would be disseminated only to the consumers who need the information, only at the precise time they need it, and only via the communications network the consumer preferred. However, knowing who needs what information, when, and how can be very difficult. Therefore, providers typically disseminate information widely in the form of mass advertisements and mailings via all possible communications mediums in order to reach all likely consumers. Because of this broad dissemination by providers, consumers receive large amounts of information, much of which is irrelevant to them. Consumers are forced to sort and filter through this information, and frequently much of it is discarded. Information which is kept may not be immediately useful, but may be needed at a later time. Unless the consumer expends a great deal of work to store, catalog, and index this information, the information can be difficult or impossible to find when the consumer actually needs it.
This same problem of efficient information distribution is exacerbated in many-to-many communications relationships, such as among the members of a workgroup. Here, communications are much more frequent and timely, and there is much greater quantity of information to be shared, stored, archived, and indexed. Members of a workgroup also have a strong need to employ communications for group coordination, such as scheduling meetings, conference calls, project deadlines, etc. These communications involve time deadlines and feedback requirements which are not typically present in one-to-many communications relationships.
With one-to-one communications relationships, the problem of efficient information disemination is lessened because the parties typically have a much higher knowledge of each other's needs and interests. Conversely, the need to use communications for coordination purposes is greatly increased, largely because between individuals the need for real-time communications sessions such as phone calls and personal meetings is acute. Thus the universal problem of "phone-tag", when both parties exchange numerous messages trying to coordinate the opportunity to communicate in real time.
The next workload involved in communications relationships is when the parties need to exchange, process, and store structured data. In a one-to-many communications relationship, a common example is a consumer ordering a product. The consumer must place a telephone call, locate a salesperson, and then manually transmit the necessary ordering information, which the salesperson must manually record. Paper or electronic product order forms can help automate this process for the provider, but they still must be filled out manually by the consumer. Many of these forms require the same standard information from the consumer, which the consumer must enter repeatedly. All of these information transfers require human involvement and thus create the potential for data errors. On the provider's part, more work is required to perform error checking on the order, process it, and in many cases return an acknowledgment to the consumer. Many providers invest heavily in data processing and electronic communications systems for automating these functions. However, the lack of a standard communications system for exchanging common data means that providers adopt largely proprietary systems, increasing the investment necessary for every provider. In addition, consumers must still interact with each these systems manually.
In a many-to-many communications relationship, such as a workgroup, the need for structured data exchange is even higher, especially when automated data processing tools such as computer software are in widespread use. Also, the need for structured data exchange for workgroup coordination activities, such as scheduling and planning, grows significantly.
One-to-one communications relationships may also involve strong needs for structured data exchange. For example, two individuals from different companies may need to review and revise a document involving both companies. The ability to do so electronically, using a secure method of exchange over public data networks, would make the task considerably easier. Individuals involved with one-to-one communications relationships also have an acute need to use structured data exchange to solve the problem of scheduling communications sessions, i.e. the phone-tag problem.
Since all communications relationships are inherently dynamic, they involve three other common tasks involved for providers and consumers: copying the relationship, transfering the relationship, and terminating the relationship. Copying is when one consumer wants to share a particular communications relationship with another consumer. For example, a mail-order catalog customer may wish to give a copy of the catalog to a friend, or a businessperson may need to share the phone number of a colleague with a customer. Transferring is when one provider assumes a consumer communications relationship from another, or one consumer assumes a provider communications relationship from another. An example would when a company changes the salesperson responsible for the customers in a sales territory, or when a customer transfers ownership of a product. Termination is when either a provider or consumer wishes to end a communications relationship, i.e. a provider no longer wants to distributes information, and/or a consumer no longer wants to receive, process, or store the information. A widespread example is consumers who wish to be dropped from direct mailing lists, and the providers who wish they could efficiently identify such consumers to save mailing costs. All three of these common, everyday communications relationship operations involve considerable effort on the part of the provider and consumers to carry out.
Therefore, a need exists for a communications system which allows providers and consumers to quickly and easily establish an automated communications relationship, one in which the data necessary to operate the communications relationship is exchanged and updated automatically, and which can control all types of communications via all types of communications network common to both the provider and consumer. A need also exists for a communications system which allows a provider to actively notify a consumer of new information in which the consumer may be interested, and which allows the consumer to precisely filter the information being sent by one or more providers. A need also exists for a communications system which allows providers and consumers to automatically structure, exchange, and process incoming or outgoing communications to the greatest extent possible. A need also exists for a communications system which allows providers and consumers to easily share access to many common communications services. Finally, a need exists for a communications control system which allows providers and consumers to easily copy, transfer, and terminate communications relationships.
Various computer-based systems have been created to provide mechanisms for communicating information. The Internet and World Wide Web provide a network of a large number of information sources, providing a voluminous amount of information. Computer programs exist which can be executed on Internet-connected computers to search these sources to obtain desired information. Additionally, through the medium of hypertext, providers of World Wide Web pages can create links in their pages between items of related information which can significantly aid consumers in finding desired information. However, the links to the information source are neither dynamic nor persistent; in the sense that they do not provide new or updated information once the consumer has found a topic of interest. "Bookmarks" in a web browser program can facilitate subsequent access to a particular web page to determine if new information is present. However, if the web page referenced by the bookmark is removed, the bookmark is no longer valid. Bookmark polling programs, such as Smart Bookmarks from First Floor, Inc., can also be used to determine whether a web page has changed since the last time the consumer viewed it. In addition, Smart Bookmarks can examine a changed page and automatically transfer to the consumer a text string embedded by the author of the page informing the consumer of the nature of the change. However, Smart Bookmarks' capability is limited to single text strings on single web pages. Therefore the consumer must locate and bookmark every Web page of interest. Smart Bookmarks does not provide a way for the consumer to filter the update messages, nor does it provide the consumer with any mechanism for exchanging structured information or managing a communications relationship with the provider.
A different type of Web monitoring solution is provided by Revnet Systems Inc. With its GroupMaster software, Web providers can create and insert special hyperlinks representing interest topics on the pages of their Web site. When a consumer clicks on this link a special data file is transferred to the consumer's GroupMaster client software. The client software then polls the Web server for updates to the interest topic input by the provider. Unlike Smart Bookmarks, all interest topics at the site can be checked in one update polling action. Update messages can be delivered to the consumer via the client software. However, these messages only contain links back to pages with follow-up information at the Web site. They do not store or index information from the provider, nor do they provide a mechanism for the consumer and provider to automate other types of structured data exchanges or manage a communications relationship.
Online navigation or "auto pilot" software, available from various commercial online services or software companies, can help the user automate access to online services, the Internet, and other public networks. The software provided by these services or companies can include capabilities such as automatic logons, automatic navigation of the online system according to consumer preferences, file searches, uploading and downloading data, and storage of data. Some systems can also automatically download the data necessary to update their own operation. However, the navigation software available from the online services typically requires that the consumer first establish an account with the online service, and may also involve establishing accounts with specific providers on the service. In addition, these navigator programs are specifically designed to work with the architecture and communications protocols of the online service, and cannot be easily adapted to other data communications networks, thus preventing other providers from using the functionality of the online service to create and distribute data in the same manner. Finally, they require that the consumer set up and maintain a communications relationship with each information provider on the service. If the provider changes its information offerings, the consumer must reprogram the autopilot or navigation software. This last disadvantage also applies to online navigation programs designed to work with the Internet and other non-proprietary public data networks.
Electronic mail (e-mail) systems are another electronic communications system that provides some communications contact persistence. E-maii addresses and messages can be stored and indexed within e-mail programs, or externally in other locations. E-mail rules engines allow for some degree of automated storage or response to certain message contents. However, these rules engines are typically constrained to acting on certain known information about the messages, such as the address of the message provider, or on semantic rules such as keywords which must be guessed by the provider and consumer. There is no common communications frame of reference, i.e., a structured data format and operations methodology, against which both the provider and consumer can operate to filter, classify, and organize messages. The lack of a common frame of reference also severely limits the capability of either the provider or consumer to automatically process the contents of an e-mail message, or to automatically respond to the message besides the capability to automatically address a reply message.
E-mail systems which support electronic forms overcome some of these limitations. Electronic forms allow the provider to control the content of a forms submission and to automatically or semi-automatically route that data around a network. Electronic forms also allow message consumers to automate a response to the forms provider which can be automatically processed by the provider. However, these forms must be received and processed by the consumer in the same manner as conventional e-mail messages. In other words, they do not provide a means for the consumer to control or filter messages from different providers. Forms also do not provide the consumer with a mechanism for automatically storing, indexing, or processing information from the provider. In addition, while they may automate the provider's ability to process the data returned from the forms, the consumer must still manually enter information in the form.
Specialized e-mail systems have been developed that combine the use of electronic forms with a system-wide data processing model. Examples are The Coordinator from Action Technologies, Inc., or OVAL from the MIT Center for Coordination Science. These systems allow providers and consumers to share a frame of reference for messaging such that messages can be classified into specific categories and actions. This allows message providers and consumers to automate the routing, storage, and processing of messages based on these category and actions. However, these systems require that all providers and consumers share the same frame of reference. They do not provide a generalized means for each provider on the system to establish and update their own frames of reference with one or more consumers, nor a generalized means for each consumer to coordinate the frames of reference they have with different providers.
A different approach to the problem of automating communications is the category of software that is commonly referred to as "software agents" or "mobile agents". An example is a platform for communications applications developed by General Magic, Inc. called Telescript. The Telescript language is an object-oriented, remote programming language with three core concepts: agents, places and "go". Agents "go" to places, where they interact with other agents to get work done on a user's behalf. Agents are mobile programs capable of transporting themselves from place to place in a Telescript network. The language is implemented by the Telescript engine. The Telescript engine is a multitasking interpreter that integrates onto an operating system through a programming interface called the Telescript API. The Telescript engine operates on server computers connected over a communications network. Telescript agents can operate independently anywhere within these server computers to control the transfer of message data and perform programmable actions upon that message data. For example, if a message recipient is not available, the message could be rerouted to a different location, rather than being returned to the sender undelivered. Telescript is similar to other agent technologies in that the architecture is based on agents interacting with other agents on server computers running agent "engines" or interpreters. In this architecture, the establishment of a communications relationship requires two agents: one to represent the provider and one the consumer. Although agent programming systems like Telescript provide the necessary tools for creating these agents, it is still necessary for both the provider and consumer to create and administer the necessary agents. Furthermore, Telescript does not provide a specific model for the filtering, storage, and indexing of communications between a provider and consumer via agents. Lastly, agent architectures require the addition of servers running agent interpreters to the communications network in order to operate, increasing the expense and complexity of the network.
A more specialized type of agent technology is delivery agents. Examples include Digital Delivery from Digital Delivery, Inc. and PointCast from PointCast Inc. Delivery agents do not require a network of specialized servers, but instead operate directly on a consumer's computer to retreive information of specific relevance to the user over a network. They are created by a particular provider to supply information from a server or servers under that providers control, or from a more generalized news source such as a wire service. Delivery agents allow a consumer to specify his/her topics of interest, which the delivery agent then uses to filter the available news stream and show the user only the information of interest. Delivery agents are also capable of storing and indexing the received data for the consumer. Other than communicating the consumer's topic preferences back to the provider, however, delivery agents do not provide a way to control or process other communications between the consumer and provider. In addition, since each delivery agent is typically designed as a separate executable program which must be installed and run separately, the consumer is limited as to the number of delivery agents the consumer can manage and run.
Another approach to automating communications and data transfers is shared replicated database systems such as Lotus Notes and Collabra Share. With these systems, information to be communicated is entered via a client program into one or more databases which may reside locally on client computers or on network server computers. These databases are then replicated to other server computers or local client computers throughout the system so that the data can be easily accessed by any other user of the system who needs the information and has the proper access privileges. Access privileges are controlled by one or more system administrators via the system servers. Some of these systems, notably Collabra Share, also allow users to "subscribe" to specific databases. These users can receive an e-mail notification from a database agent monitoring the database when a new entry or a certain condition has been made in that database. These systems may also employ electronic forms and forms processing languages to structure the data being entered into a database, and to take programmable actions based on the data entered. The architecture of these systems is designed for groups of users to share information related to specific topics, and to automate the transfer of data between different computer applications used by an organization. For this reason the core data structure of the architecture is a subject database or "forum". Each subject database covers a number of related interest topics under which all entries in the database are categorized. All copies of any subject database are synchronized throughout the system when data in any one copy has been changed.
While suitable for information sharing amongst the members of a group, this architecture is not well suited for automating communications relationships among a large number of information providers and consumers. First, all the providers and consumers need to be interconnected through the system in order to communicate. This could be done by having all providers and consumers enroll in one large system in which they all had access privileges. In such a system each provider would need to have at least one subject database for communicating with his/her consumers. This enormous number of subject databases would then need to be replicated among the large number of servers required to service the complete population of the system, which would quickly overwhelm the capacity of the servers or network to handle replication. A more realistic alternative would be to have each provider or group of providers operate and administer their own system, making their internal subject databases available to consumers via public data networks such as the Internet. Consumers would use the system client software to "subscribe" to the subject databases of each provider with which they desire to communicate. Only the subject databases a consumer subscribed to would be replicated on his/her desktop. This solution would spread the replication load to a large number of servers, each handling a smaller amount of traffic. However, each server would now have to manage replication for a large number of external consumers as well as internal group members. There is no easy way to distribute this replication load to the consumer's computer. Second, subject databases do not allow the consumer to control and filter the incoming communications from providers. Consumers must still scan the databases for items of interest. Providers could overcome this by creating a subject database for each interest topic, but the additional administrative and server replication overhead would strongly discourage this. Third, because notification of new information is handled via a separate application, e-mail, the consumer is forced to coordinate notification and data storage/response among two communications systems. Fourth, since subject databases are replicated from the servers, they do not give consumers an easy way to copy or transfer them to other consumers. Finally, because the entire system depends on server-based replication, administrative changes or reconfigurations of these servers such as system name or address changes require administrative updates to all subscribing consumers, a job which consumers must handle manually.
Consequently, a need exists for a communications control system which allows providers and consumers to quickly and easily establish an automated communications relationship; which automatically updates both parties with changes in communications control data from the other; which works with all communications networks shared by the provider and consumer; which allows both parties to automatically control, filter, store, index, and process communications from the other; which allows both providers and consumers to share many common communications services; and which allows both parties to easily manage, copy, transfer, and terminate the communications relationship.